ULA wins private lunar launch contract
Capitalism in space: Astrobotic, the private company building a lunar lander for NASA, has chosen ULA’s Vulcan rocket for its launch vehicle.
Astrobotic announced today that it selected United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in a competitive commercial procurement to launch its Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon in 2021.
“We are so excited to sign with ULA and fly Peregrine on Vulcan Centaur. This contract with ULA was the result of a highly competitive commercial process, and we are grateful to everyone involved in helping us make low-cost lunar transportation possible. When we launch the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo, onboard the first Vulcan Centaur rocket, it will be a historic day for the country and commercial enterprise,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton.
This is the second contract announcement for ULA’s Vulcan rocket, with the first being Sierra Nevada’s announcement that it would use Vulcan for Dream Chaser’s first six flights.
Isn’t competition wonderful? It appears to me that ULA must be offering very cut-rate deals to get these contracts, since the rocket has not yet flown while SpaceX’s already operational Falcon Heavy (with three successful launches) could easily do the job and is a very inexpensive rocket to fly. These lower prices, instigated by competition and freedom, will mean that funding missions to the Moon will continue to become more likely, even if NASA and the federal government fail to get their act together.
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Capitalism in space: Astrobotic, the private company building a lunar lander for NASA, has chosen ULA’s Vulcan rocket for its launch vehicle.
Astrobotic announced today that it selected United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in a competitive commercial procurement to launch its Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon in 2021.
“We are so excited to sign with ULA and fly Peregrine on Vulcan Centaur. This contract with ULA was the result of a highly competitive commercial process, and we are grateful to everyone involved in helping us make low-cost lunar transportation possible. When we launch the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo, onboard the first Vulcan Centaur rocket, it will be a historic day for the country and commercial enterprise,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton.
This is the second contract announcement for ULA’s Vulcan rocket, with the first being Sierra Nevada’s announcement that it would use Vulcan for Dream Chaser’s first six flights.
Isn’t competition wonderful? It appears to me that ULA must be offering very cut-rate deals to get these contracts, since the rocket has not yet flown while SpaceX’s already operational Falcon Heavy (with three successful launches) could easily do the job and is a very inexpensive rocket to fly. These lower prices, instigated by competition and freedom, will mean that funding missions to the Moon will continue to become more likely, even if NASA and the federal government fail to get their act together.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I think the key take-away from the press release is that bit about it being “the first Vulcan Centaur rocket” (emphasis mine).
If Vulcan is held to the same USAF certification criteria as Falcon 9 was – and there really isn’t any wiggle room on that with SpaceX being plenty big enough now to put ULA in the ground, legally, if any obvious favoritism is applied – then Vulcan is going to need three launches before it can be cleared to carry NatSec payloads.
The recent Dream Chaser announcement noted that the first Dream Chaser Cargo spacecraft would be payload number two for Vulcan – and a second such might well be payload number three. But either SNC wasn’t going to have Dream Chaser Cargo ready to go in time to be payload number one, or wasn’t willing to risk being the payload for Vulcan’s maiden voyage.
Enter Astrobotic. They likely got quoted the new standard F9 launch price of $50 million for a dedicated launch by SpaceX. ULA must have come in with a lower bid.
Considered in isolation, this would be a loss-making deal. But ULA needed to fly the first Vulcan as part of the three missions needed for certification whether or not it could find a payload to put aboard. So ULA – very wisely – took what it could get to minimize the loss on the first Vulcan mission and Astrobotic got a heavily-discounted trip to the Moon for its lander. Win-win.
“It appears to me that ULA must be offering very cut-rate deals to get these contracts, since the rocket has not yet flown while SpaceX’s already operational Falcon Heavy (with three successful launches) could easily do the job and is a very inexpensive rocket to fly.”
Oh, I think that’s the sense we’re hearing from sources, as well as the implication of SNC’s public remarks. I think you’d have to offer a haircut for the first certification flight of *any* new launcher.
That said, the cost differential may not have been quite so massive to begin with. The Cargo Dream Chaser is a big payload; it *might* fit within the mass limits of a Falcon 9 expendable; but with the additional expendable cargo module, it won’t fit in the standard Falcon fairing, so SNC would have to pay extra to have one built, and that would add several million right there.
Still, it really does sound like this was a high comfort level with ULA decision – their relationship goes back a long way, and that kind of thing matters in big corporate decisions like this. Maybe that’s worth a premium to SNC. Even so, they can thank SpaceX that the final price they got, whatever it was, has got to be significantly lower than it would have been if SpaceX did not exist.